7 ms·

Even with all those neural net advantages, dual-core, 2GB RAM iPhone 6s beats octa-core, 4GB RAM Galaxy Note 7: http://www.redmondpie.com/galaxy-note-7-vs-ipho

by Jerry2 10y ago

Even with all those neural net advantages, dual-core, 2GB RAM iPhone 6s beats octa-core, 4GB RAM Galaxy Note 7: http://www.redmondpie.com/galaxy-note-7-vs-iphone-6s-real-world-speed-test/ http://www.redmondpie.com/galaxy-note-7-vs-iphone-6s-real-wo... Video (3:29 sec): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-61FFoJFy0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-61FFoJFy0 PS: I highly recommend you check out the video... iPhone completely obliterated Note 7.

the_mitsuhiko 10y ago
That's not too surprising. There is a lot more that runs on an Android phone usually.
- matt_wulfeck 10y ago
  What more is running on an android phone then other OS? Seems like they have some fat to trim if there's more required to run their phone.
  - pjmlp 10y ago
    Frameworks based on Java with GC and JIT for each process?
  - zigzigzag 10y ago
    Even today, Android and iOS are not comparable in terms of what they allow apps to do, which is why iOS tends to win responsiveness comparisons and Android (still) tends to win feature comparisons, even years after Apple fell behind the features race and started simply duplicating Android's featureset (multi-tasking, notifications drawer, gradually allowing more and more background operations etc).
- digi_owl 10y ago
  Yeah my first thought went to how Android will background anything when you hit center button, while iOS will basically give it a few seconds to pack up state and then evict it. Been that way since day one, and has very little to do with the hardware.
  - vbezhenar 10y ago
    It doesn't really evict it. It pauses execution, but program is still running, so when you switch to it, it'll continue to run from the same moment you left it. If another foreground app requests more memory, then yes, iOS might terminate background apps, but that's not necessary. Also there's limited support for background tasks in modern iOS, so background apps might still drain battery and affect CPU (though probably not significantly).
    - oarsinsync 10y ago
      > Also there's limited support for background tasks in modern iOS, so background apps might still drain battery and affect CPU (though probably not significantly). Unless they do something abusive like keep the speaker or mic on, which then permits them to be more abusive like keep location services active, which then rapidly drains battery. http://solutionowl.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-solving-iphone-ipad-and-ios-battery-drain/ http://solutionowl.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-solving-iphone-...
- coldtea 10y ago
  If you mean bloated Java runtimes, then we agree.
  - Grazester 10y ago
    Android doesn't have any Java runtimes because it doesn't use Java! Java it merely the programming language used but the programs are compiled into an Android specific byte code
    - coldtea 10y ago
      Why, thank you, technically correct man. http://9gag.com/gag/a5PmrLq/technically-correct-man-the-man-we-need http://9gag.com/gag/a5PmrLq/technically-correct-man-the-man-...
stephengillie 10y ago
It should be noted most Android phones use a "Dual-Quad" design, with a bank of 4x A53 for low-power operation, and a dual or quad set of more powerful processors (A57, M1, etc) for full-power operation. Still, it's interesting to see the single A9 with coprocessor outperform dual M1s - like was said about the reduced core count in the Snapdragon 820: “The most important thing to have is peak single-threaded performance, as most of the time only one or two cores are active." [0] This is apparently true, with the iPhone outperforming despite its A9 running up to 400mhz slower than the Android cohort's Snapdragon. [0] http://trustedreviews.com/opinions/snapdragon-820-vs-snapdragon-810 http://trustedreviews.com/opinions/snapdragon-820-vs-snapdra...
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
viraptor 10y ago
That test is relevant for the end user, but it doesn't make sense as a hardware test. It's a different system, on different hardware, with different apps (that happen to share the same name), and essentially what you're comparing is resource loading strategies. iPhone is better at that - great. But for a hardware test, I'd expect a single running app, executing shared native codebase, in no disruptions airplane mode, measuring specific part of the hardware. And that's not even close to measuring before/after improved branch prediction, which could be useful in both phones.
- swinglock 10y ago
  Why measure and therefore optimize for anything but how the product is being used?
  - girvo 10y ago
    In general: because how a piece of hardware (or set of hardware) is used today isn't necessarily how it's going to be used tomorrow. Faster hardware allows for use-cases that weren't possible prior.
    - kingnothing 10y ago
      However, when we're talking about phones or consumer devices, how it's used today is the only thing that's relevant. It will be obsolete in just a couple of years.
      - comboy 10y ago
        I think the parent point is still valid. Look at Pokemon Go. Average user wouldn't care about AR performance, all that high gps accuracy or gfx performance in unity. Suddenly, there are millions of players who are choosing their hardware based on that. If you are planning for today's usage you you may be lagging.
  - viraptor 10y ago
    I didn't say it's not valid, or that it shouldn't have been done. I'm just saying "NN still doesn't help them beat iPhone" is not a relevant comment regarding this test. To go with car analogy it's close to an article about an slightly improved design of one part of fuel injection in new ABC and someone commenting "look, an XYZ from last year still can go faster without it". The test is a valid observation, but is irrelevant to this article, or to the technology. Why measure something that doesn't show up in a standard user's test? Here are some examples: lower power usage, lower latency of small operations (rather than throughput of large actions), smaller design (saving chip space), etc. And finally - if this is a good technology, Apple can use it too and get even faster.
kbart 10y ago
"Even with all those neural net advantages" On the other hand, without a neural net, it might be even slower. Android supports tons of different architectures and platforms, of course you can't optimize it like Apple can with a single platform.
- BinaryIdiot 10y ago
  > Android supports tons of different architectures and platforms, of course you can't optimize it like Apple can with a single platform. Not really. Sure Android can run on multiple architectures but 99% of the time it's mostly the same. Why couldn't they provide optimizations for multiple architectures anyway? Whenever something can run on more than 1 architecture I usually see the argument about how it can't be as optimized on any specific architecture but I don't see why not. Optimize for the 80% use case and you're probably covered. Go beyond that to get more performance out of other platforms but it's unlikely necessary.
  - kbart 10y ago
    "Why couldn't they provide optimizations for multiple architectures anyway?" Because Android is usually developed by at least two companies: Google does generics and OEM which is responsible that Android runs smoothly on their hardware. Sure, given enough time and resources, you could do optimization for every hardware combination possible, but that is not how things work in real world, especially where release cycles are such insane as in smartphones market.
    - BinaryIdiot 10y ago
      > Sure, given enough time and resources, you could do optimization for every hardware combination possible, but that is not how things work in real world, especially where release cycles are such insane as in smartphones market You make it sound as if every version of CPU, GPU and chipset have to be optimized in every combination possible but typically you do optimizations based on various CPU targets, optimizations based on GPU targets, etc; the vast majority of smart phones use the same architecture and many end up targeting the same CPUs and GPUs (I mean how many phones ended up / still use the Snapdragon 820?). Yes they can't optimize for every combination but optimizing for the typical CPUs and GPUs seems like something they're likely already doing. If the stack was squished and Google made it from hardware to software I'm not sure that they would be necessarily doing optimizations any different on the hardware / driver level.
veeti 10y ago
This is because of Samsung's garbage software. Years and years go by and every single time they manage to make the best hardware and slap a laggy and bloated version of Android on top of it. I'm sure that a Note 7 with a more Nexus-like build of Android is a dream for many.
- wutbrodo 10y ago
  They drastically pared down the software differences in the last version or two. Me from five years ago would be shocked to hear me say it, but it's to the point that with the s6, I preferred the new stripped down TouchWiz by a long shot to stock android (TouchWiz has always had design advantages that stock android sometimes incorporates, e.g. Quick settings in the notification bar).
- kayoone 10y ago
  While i prefer stock Android, the Note arguably benefits a lot from a different software because it's tailored to the Stylus and round edges. Other than that they already toned it down a lot to where it was a few years ago, so i don't think the impact is that huge. I really love the Note 7 for the possibilities that the stylus brings, so the Samsung software is something i'd have to live with.
- tribaal 10y ago
  I've been a happy Samsung customer for the longest time, because I basically flashed their nice hardware with cyanogenmod. My recently purchase S7 is the first ever cellphone I return to the store because: 1) It's way too hard to flash their exynos based hardware and 2) the default install comes with 14Gb of garbage included. That includes the full microsoft office and a slew of garbage apps I'll never use (I'd include the launcher in that, but I understand some people like it, so I'll it a pass) Annecdata, but I have now become this guy who will tirelessly slap Samsung's garbage software "strategy" every time I have the opportunity.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
zigzigzag 10y ago
It'd be really interesting to see a performance analysis of what's going on there. Is it just a weaker CPU or are the apps less optimised as well? The two phones were comparable right up to the time they loaded a game and it just fell behind further and further from that point on. Why is loading that particular game so much slower? The developers didn't care to optimise it? edit: The article points out that the resolution of the Samsung display is a lot higher, so it's not quite comparing apples and oranges here. I'm guessing that a much higher resolution is pure win when drawing mostly vector graphics i.e. apps but really kills you when loading games as presumably they're paging in much larger assets from disk.
- simonh 10y ago
  I doubt the assets are different, that would require the developer to include different assets for various different Android screen resolutions for different phones in the Android version of the app. Rather it's the dynamic drawing engine that will be doing more work generating the screen images at the higher fidelity because that will work at the screen's physical resolution.
  - mrkgnao 10y ago
    I believe separate APK files for separate resolutions may be a thing on the Play store, but I'm not entirely sure.
- brigade 10y ago
  Well for starters, Anandtech measured the NAND performance of the 6s as significantly faster than the Note7; 1.65x faster sequential 256k and 1.15x faster random 4K.
andrepd 10y ago
Oh god it's one of those app opening videos isn't it? Yep, it is. D: Well here is a tip that should be somewhat obvious: unscientific measurements of which phone loads apps faster when you click from the home screen isn't any basis to claim a phone "beats" the other, especially when we were talking about processor performance. By the way, the iPhone beats the S7 on single core and the S7 wins on multi core performance. Which makes sense seeing as you are competing a dual core with an octa core.
gpderetta 10y ago
Apple A9 is a quite sophisticate CPU, there is no reason to believe is not using a state of the art predictor. The Samsung CPU might not have any advantage at all on this area.
andrewpi 10y ago
US versions of the Note 7 use a Qualcomm processor, not a Exynos. (supposedly to support Verizon and Sprint's CDMA networks)
Grazester 10y ago
Yeah the Note 7 is documented as being full of bloat effecting its performance. http://www.xda-developers.com/with-the-note-7-samsung-still-delivers-embarrassing-real-world-performance/ http://www.xda-developers.com/with-the-note-7-samsung-still-...

by Jerry2 10y ago

the_mitsuhiko 10y ago

That's not too surprising. There is a lot more that runs on an Android phone usually.

matt_wulfeck 10y ago
What more is running on an android phone then other OS? Seems like they have some fat to trim if there's more required to run their phone.
- pjmlp 10y ago
  Frameworks based on Java with GC and JIT for each process?
- zigzigzag 10y ago
  Even today, Android and iOS are not comparable in terms of what they allow apps to do, which is why iOS tends to win responsiveness comparisons and Android (still) tends to win feature comparisons, even years after Apple fell behind the features race and started simply duplicating Android's featureset (multi-tasking, notifications drawer, gradually allowing more and more background operations etc).
digi_owl 10y ago
Yeah my first thought went to how Android will background anything when you hit center button, while iOS will basically give it a few seconds to pack up state and then evict it. Been that way since day one, and has very little to do with the hardware.
- vbezhenar 10y ago
  It doesn't really evict it. It pauses execution, but program is still running, so when you switch to it, it'll continue to run from the same moment you left it. If another foreground app requests more memory, then yes, iOS might terminate background apps, but that's not necessary. Also there's limited support for background tasks in modern iOS, so background apps might still drain battery and affect CPU (though probably not significantly).
  - oarsinsync 10y ago
    > Also there's limited support for background tasks in modern iOS, so background apps might still drain battery and affect CPU (though probably not significantly). Unless they do something abusive like keep the speaker or mic on, which then permits them to be more abusive like keep location services active, which then rapidly drains battery. http://solutionowl.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-solving-iphone-ipad-and-ios-battery-drain/ http://solutionowl.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-solving-iphone-...
coldtea 10y ago
If you mean bloated Java runtimes, then we agree.
- Grazester 10y ago
  Android doesn't have any Java runtimes because it doesn't use Java! Java it merely the programming language used but the programs are compiled into an Android specific byte code
  - coldtea 10y ago
    Why, thank you, technically correct man. http://9gag.com/gag/a5PmrLq/technically-correct-man-the-man-we-need http://9gag.com/gag/a5PmrLq/technically-correct-man-the-man-...

stephengillie 10y ago

It should be noted most Android phones use a "Dual-Quad" design, with a bank of 4x A53 for low-power operation, and a dual or quad set of more powerful processors (A57, M1, etc) for full-power operation. Still, it's interesting to see the single A9 with coprocessor outperform dual M1s - like was said about the reduced core count in the Snapdragon 820: “The most important thing to have is peak single-threaded performance, as most of the time only one or two cores are active." [0] This is apparently true, with the iPhone outperforming despite its A9 running up to 400mhz slower than the Android cohort's Snapdragon. [0] http://trustedreviews.com/opinions/snapdragon-820-vs-snapdragon-810 http://trustedreviews.com/opinions/snapdragon-820-vs-snapdra...

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

viraptor 10y ago

That test is relevant for the end user, but it doesn't make sense as a hardware test. It's a different system, on different hardware, with different apps (that happen to share the same name), and essentially what you're comparing is resource loading strategies. iPhone is better at that - great. But for a hardware test, I'd expect a single running app, executing shared native codebase, in no disruptions airplane mode, measuring specific part of the hardware. And that's not even close to measuring before/after improved branch prediction, which could be useful in both phones.

swinglock 10y ago
Why measure and therefore optimize for anything but how the product is being used?
- girvo 10y ago
  In general: because how a piece of hardware (or set of hardware) is used today isn't necessarily how it's going to be used tomorrow. Faster hardware allows for use-cases that weren't possible prior.
  - kingnothing 10y ago
    However, when we're talking about phones or consumer devices, how it's used today is the only thing that's relevant. It will be obsolete in just a couple of years.
    - comboy 10y ago
      I think the parent point is still valid. Look at Pokemon Go. Average user wouldn't care about AR performance, all that high gps accuracy or gfx performance in unity. Suddenly, there are millions of players who are choosing their hardware based on that. If you are planning for today's usage you you may be lagging.
- viraptor 10y ago
  I didn't say it's not valid, or that it shouldn't have been done. I'm just saying "NN still doesn't help them beat iPhone" is not a relevant comment regarding this test. To go with car analogy it's close to an article about an slightly improved design of one part of fuel injection in new ABC and someone commenting "look, an XYZ from last year still can go faster without it". The test is a valid observation, but is irrelevant to this article, or to the technology. Why measure something that doesn't show up in a standard user's test? Here are some examples: lower power usage, lower latency of small operations (rather than throughput of large actions), smaller design (saving chip space), etc. And finally - if this is a good technology, Apple can use it too and get even faster.

kbart 10y ago

"Even with all those neural net advantages" On the other hand, without a neural net, it might be even slower. Android supports tons of different architectures and platforms, of course you can't optimize it like Apple can with a single platform.

BinaryIdiot 10y ago
> Android supports tons of different architectures and platforms, of course you can't optimize it like Apple can with a single platform. Not really. Sure Android can run on multiple architectures but 99% of the time it's mostly the same. Why couldn't they provide optimizations for multiple architectures anyway? Whenever something can run on more than 1 architecture I usually see the argument about how it can't be as optimized on any specific architecture but I don't see why not. Optimize for the 80% use case and you're probably covered. Go beyond that to get more performance out of other platforms but it's unlikely necessary.
- kbart 10y ago
  "Why couldn't they provide optimizations for multiple architectures anyway?" Because Android is usually developed by at least two companies: Google does generics and OEM which is responsible that Android runs smoothly on their hardware. Sure, given enough time and resources, you could do optimization for every hardware combination possible, but that is not how things work in real world, especially where release cycles are such insane as in smartphones market.
  - BinaryIdiot 10y ago
    > Sure, given enough time and resources, you could do optimization for every hardware combination possible, but that is not how things work in real world, especially where release cycles are such insane as in smartphones market You make it sound as if every version of CPU, GPU and chipset have to be optimized in every combination possible but typically you do optimizations based on various CPU targets, optimizations based on GPU targets, etc; the vast majority of smart phones use the same architecture and many end up targeting the same CPUs and GPUs (I mean how many phones ended up / still use the Snapdragon 820?). Yes they can't optimize for every combination but optimizing for the typical CPUs and GPUs seems like something they're likely already doing. If the stack was squished and Google made it from hardware to software I'm not sure that they would be necessarily doing optimizations any different on the hardware / driver level.

veeti 10y ago

This is because of Samsung's garbage software. Years and years go by and every single time they manage to make the best hardware and slap a laggy and bloated version of Android on top of it. I'm sure that a Note 7 with a more Nexus-like build of Android is a dream for many.

wutbrodo 10y ago
They drastically pared down the software differences in the last version or two. Me from five years ago would be shocked to hear me say it, but it's to the point that with the s6, I preferred the new stripped down TouchWiz by a long shot to stock android (TouchWiz has always had design advantages that stock android sometimes incorporates, e.g. Quick settings in the notification bar).
kayoone 10y ago
While i prefer stock Android, the Note arguably benefits a lot from a different software because it's tailored to the Stylus and round edges. Other than that they already toned it down a lot to where it was a few years ago, so i don't think the impact is that huge. I really love the Note 7 for the possibilities that the stylus brings, so the Samsung software is something i'd have to live with.
tribaal 10y ago
I've been a happy Samsung customer for the longest time, because I basically flashed their nice hardware with cyanogenmod. My recently purchase S7 is the first ever cellphone I return to the store because: 1) It's way too hard to flash their exynos based hardware and 2) the default install comes with 14Gb of garbage included. That includes the full microsoft office and a slew of garbage apps I'll never use (I'd include the launcher in that, but I understand some people like it, so I'll it a pass) Annecdata, but I have now become this guy who will tirelessly slap Samsung's garbage software "strategy" every time I have the opportunity.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

zigzigzag 10y ago

It'd be really interesting to see a performance analysis of what's going on there. Is it just a weaker CPU or are the apps less optimised as well? The two phones were comparable right up to the time they loaded a game and it just fell behind further and further from that point on. Why is loading that particular game so much slower? The developers didn't care to optimise it? edit: The article points out that the resolution of the Samsung display is a lot higher, so it's not quite comparing apples and oranges here. I'm guessing that a much higher resolution is pure win when drawing mostly vector graphics i.e. apps but really kills you when loading games as presumably they're paging in much larger assets from disk.

simonh 10y ago
I doubt the assets are different, that would require the developer to include different assets for various different Android screen resolutions for different phones in the Android version of the app. Rather it's the dynamic drawing engine that will be doing more work generating the screen images at the higher fidelity because that will work at the screen's physical resolution.
- mrkgnao 10y ago
  I believe separate APK files for separate resolutions may be a thing on the Play store, but I'm not entirely sure.
brigade 10y ago
Well for starters, Anandtech measured the NAND performance of the 6s as significantly faster than the Note7; 1.65x faster sequential 256k and 1.15x faster random 4K.

andrepd 10y ago

Oh god it's one of those app opening videos isn't it? Yep, it is. D: Well here is a tip that should be somewhat obvious: unscientific measurements of which phone loads apps faster when you click from the home screen isn't any basis to claim a phone "beats" the other, especially when we were talking about processor performance. By the way, the iPhone beats the S7 on single core and the S7 wins on multi core performance. Which makes sense seeing as you are competing a dual core with an octa core.

gpderetta 10y ago

Apple A9 is a quite sophisticate CPU, there is no reason to believe is not using a state of the art predictor. The Samsung CPU might not have any advantage at all on this area.

andrewpi 10y ago

US versions of the Note 7 use a Qualcomm processor, not a Exynos. (supposedly to support Verizon and Sprint's CDMA networks)

Grazester 10y ago

Yeah the Note 7 is documented as being full of bloat effecting its performance. http://www.xda-developers.com/with-the-note-7-samsung-still-delivers-embarrassing-real-world-performance/ http://www.xda-developers.com/with-the-note-7-samsung-still-...